Marlon Riggs

Every summer there’s a gallery that finds an occasion to launch a cat show, and this season is no different. Start the week off at Con Artist Collective, which will host a show demonstrating artists love for kitties. Consider that show a warm up for what’s to come. Thursday in Gowanus, we’ll see what happens when artists are given access to a treasure trove discarded electronics. We can’t wait. On Friday, head out to this week’s latest artist zine festival and wrap the week up Sunday with the 25 anniversary of Queens Pride at the Queens Museum. It’s a one day pop-up exhibition looking at the history of the event and bound to be both informative and joyful.

Sitting in Ni’Ja Whitson’s A Meditation On Tongues Sunday night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was watching ghosts. Part of the American Realness festival, their moving performance (Note: Ni’Ja identifies as gender non-specific and prefers the pronouns “they/their”) reinterpreted Marlon Riggs’s seminal 1989 film Tongues Untied, which explored the fraught intersection of black and gay male identity during the critical years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

More than an ode to an important cultural object, A Meditation On Tongues seemed like a raising of the dead. By appropriating the film’s dialogue and imagery, Whitson and their fellow performers channeled the lost generation of black gay men depicted in the film through the bodies of today’s gender nonconforming and queer artists of color. This allowed Whitson to not only address a wider range of gender presentations, but also powerfully represent the ongoing legacy of Riggs and other late poets, writers and dancers in Tongues Untied.

“Black is and black ain’t.” Walking through Pace Gallery’s current exhibition Blackness in Abstraction, I began to think about that title line from Marlon Riggs’s final film—taken from the prologue of Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man. Even more than the pervasive “Black is beautiful,” this curiously ambiguous phrase hints at the multitude of meanings, voices, and questions surrounding blackness in the exhibition.

Knoedler & Co.’s sale of 80 million dollars worth of fake paintings is the scandal that just keeps giving. This Sunday, 60 minutes did a segment, with Anderson Cooper hosting. Cooper couldn’t get the gallery’s owner, though, Ann Freedman to agree to the interview. That’s more interesting than the segment itself, which reveals little [CBS News via ARTnews]

Two parents forgot the essential “do not touch” lesson of art-viewing at the Shanghai Museum of Glass. In a stunning but–let’s be honest–hilarious CCTV video, two boys not only touch Shelly Xue’s ethereal “Angel Is Waiting” sculpture, but yank it off the walls as their parents stand by filming [Hyperallergic]

Holy crap. In Canadian news wholly unrelated to art, The Tragically Hip, Canada’s most beloved rock band, announced that their lead singer Gord Downie has terminal brain cancer. [Local xPress]

Noel Cruz removes the paint on faces of dolls so he can repaint them. He choses dolls of celebrities, and gives them an eery life-like look. Normally, not our bag, but you gotta admit there’s some serious skill here. [Deviant Art]

239 Tenth Avenue in Chelsea, the one time home to Getty Gas station, and an art installation of fake sheep owned by Peter Marino (referred to by Curbed as “the leather daddy of luxury”), is currently under construction. Get ready for condos! Curbed, doing what Curbed does, has the photos of that…construction. [Curbed]

The art world can also produce tabloid fodder worthy of Hollywood as seen in the headline “Isa Genzken Says She Became An Alcoholic After Her Divorce From Gerhard Richter.” Juicy. [artnet News]

Every so often it’s important to get an education, as well as see what materials renowned artists are reading. Hank Willis Thomas provides a curriculum on “Vision & Justice” including, unsurprisingly, texts by Audre Lorde, James Baldwin and Marlon Riggs. [Aperture]

The Rider’s Alliance, a grassroots transit advocacy group has polled New Yorkers who live in zip codes served by the L train whether they’d prefer an 18 month, full shutdown, or three years of disrupted service. 77 percent of the 350 respondents said they’d prefer the 18 month shut down. The L Train tunnel incurred significant damage during Hurricane Sandy and requires the work. Many galleries and artists are served by this line. [Capital New York]

After binge-watching every season of The X-Files, we’re a little disappointed we missed this weekend’s annual Pine Bush UFO Festival, which includes, according to their website, UFO novelties, live characters and the “now INFAMOUS (and often hilarious) ‘Alien and UFO Themed Parade’.” Here are the pics from that event, which includes adults, children and dogs in tacky green alien costumes. [Gothamist]

July is shaping up to be an exciting month for queer art in the city, with a series of daily interventions titled “On Location” curated by Dirty Looks, the self-described “Monthly Roaming Platform for Queer Experimental Film and Video.” Dirty Looks has coordinated a screening or celebration in an art venue or a queer social site each and every day of the month, so if you have already missed out on the first few screenings (it is July 9th after all!), we are here to fill you in on some upcoming events that should not be overlooked.